A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
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Wednesday, August 09, 2017

Want weed, will travel? Cannabis-product company American Green Inc. is hoping you will, since it just bought the entire town of Nipton, Calif., to transform it into a niche tourist destination for marijuana fans, Jennifer Kaplan reports for Bloomberg.

The former mining hamlet, population 20, is a three-hour drive from Los Angeles and an hour from Las Vegas. Project manager Stephen Shearin says he hopes increasing mainstream acceptance of marijuana could make the town profitable. "The Gold Rush built this city," he told Kaplan. "The Green Rush can keep it moving the way people envisioned it years ago."

Recreational marijuana is now legal on some level in seven states, but some Americans continue to be leery. American Green says it embarked on this project in part to educate the public about the benefits of the plant and appeal to a broader audience. The company, which paid $5 million for Nipton, says it plans to invest up to $2.5 million over the next 18 months to revitalize the town, using both existing buildings and new ones powered by renewable energy. Their plans include "a new facility to manufacture water infused with CBD, the
cannabis component that is typically associated with reducing pain and
inflammation. The new Nipton will also have a production site for edible
marijuana products, retail stores, and artist-in-residence programs," Kaplan reports.

American Green and other cannabis product companies are hopeful about the future, but wary that government intervention might halt sales. Though marijuana is illegal at the federal level, President Barack Obama had a hands-off policy toward businesses operating in states where marijuana was legal. President Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions is notoriously anti-marijuana, though, and may order a crackdown.

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This blog generally follows traditional journalistic standards. It's not about opinions, though you may read one here occasionally. It's about facts that we think will be useful to rural journalists, non-rural journalists who do rural stories, and others interested in rural issues. We don't try to be provocative, so we don't generate as many comments as most blogs with the level of traffic we have, but we certainly invite comments -- and contributions, to al.cross@uky.edu. Feel free to republish blog items, with credit to us and the original source.